Rating: 
Summary: much awaited.... disappointment
Review: A book on how to develop .NET controls in VB was long due. I preordered this book months before it was published and finally got it last week... only to find out it contained very little useful information.Well first of all the author has dedicated only some 40 pages to ASP.NET controls, from which 15 pages are arguably useless. For example, the section starts with an overview of ASP.NET server controls, drags on for 4 pages, then teaches you how to set up your IIS to run ASP.NET. Wait it gets worse... then it teaches you how to use Visual Studio's IDE and just as soon as you're ready to throw it away it gets to the point. But here a simple text box with a post button is all the example you're gonna get. In other words half of this section is designed to help you take the baby steps. The book lacks comprehensive control samples, the author for some reason is obsessed with validation controls, most examples are on validation controls. One thing I would give the author credit for is explanation of data bound controls and how to create them. But again... it's only 8 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Additional framework capability revealed
Review: As another reviewer mentioned, this book is exceptional many ways. If you have never heard of a custom designer, isolated storage, custom editors, type converters, advanced use of attributes and serialization, use of encryption, using raw GDI+, designer verbs, etc., if you are like me you will probably find this book useful. I have been using .net since 2/2002 and thought I knew my way around the framework. But I didnt realize another hidden universe of capablity regarding custom controls. Each chapter develops new and mostly useful controls you can place on your tool palette. One example in particular lets you inherit a stock textbox, and add an extender to allow it of validate a phone number, email address, url, or other input with regular expressions. No need to rewrite this boring code over and over. Click this on your toolbox and you have a new control. Or you might want to add / remove properties from a new or existing control. If you have been using ASP.NET, a simple program shows you how to decrypt the Viewstate. Complete programs on control licensing show how to use various techniques to usethe licensing object and the registry or XML to handle piracy. The thing I like is that each chapter has one or more full programs that are targeted at program designers. For example, sorting a listbox in VB6 was easy, but in .net it's ASCII only. Connell shows how to build a .dll to sort in numeric, date, or any other sort order. While you would think this is built in - it's not?? which makes the stock control limited for all but the most trivial use. Anyway, I liked the book for those reasons. Some sections could be longer and others shorter - but on balance it's well written and you are probably guaratneed to learn more from this book than many of the others filling the bookshelves. One thing I have to say is that now I "think" about developing my own custom controls - either for work use or for sale to other developers. I never thought like this before, so for this alone it was worth the read.
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Summary: Table of contents found
Review: For Ramesh: Table of contents for the books may be found at http://www.booksmatter.com/b0735619247.htm
Rating:
Summary: Finally - not a me-too VB.Net Book
Review: I browse every new VB.Net book that comes out, and find that most are pretty much the same in terms of generalized content. This book is a refreshing change. Mr. Connell covers encryption with a handy control to encrypt your important files so that even governments can't crack them, let alone snooping co-workers. But he covers isolated storage, the control designer, custom designers, designer verbs, type editors, type converters, and other topics you just don't find elsewhere. Other topics such as serialization, control licensing, the advanced use of the ASP.NET datagrid, and of course building sophisticated controls for both the desktop and the web are well done. This book treads new and exciting ground, so you won't have to worry about not learning new concepts. There is fresh and incredibly useful material in each chapter. Even if you are not building controls today, this book will help you be a better all-round programmer in so many ways. I've read Mr. Connell's other books and enjoyed them - this was not a disappointment and for me worth the wait.
Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff
Review: I found the encryption control fascinating. While encryption is the up and coming area, I never realized you could do something this sophisticated. It's easy to see how this nifty control can be added to many of my programs. And the technique of hashing a key from a PW is elegant. Also, the concept of Isolated Storage was presented and covered in depth - another area that was new to me. The book is loaded with useful tips such as something I always wondered about - why do my VB forms and controls look flat on XP, when my browser and other programs sport the XP colorful look? All that is missing is a simple manifest and property settings. Cool. I was also impressed with the wireless and pocketPC programming. Oh, and then there is the advanced datagrid which shows how to make that sing. I wish the book were twice the size. Good stuff - I read it cover to cover in less than three days.
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Summary: Not particularly useful for ASP.Net developers
Review: I have Connell's "Beginning VB6 Database" book which I found to be pretty valuable. "Developing Microsoft .Net Controls" is better written but lacks enough meat, especially for ASP.Net programmers where it is way too sparse. Here's the basic problem. The book is 10 chapters long. Chapter 1 is pretty much controls 101. Then there's Chapter 2 explaining the WinForm controls shipping with Visual Studio. And we can't forget Chapter 9 explaining WebForm controls that ship with Visual Studio. Oh, I didn't mention Chapter 3 is "advanced" use of WinForm controls that ship with Visual Studio. These chapters are just as long as all the rest meaning 40% of the book has nothing to do with developing custom controls! There is some hard to find elsewhere meat on topics like licensing controls but for many coders today developing advanced web forms on intranets, there's only one rushed chapter that's useful on ASP.Net custom controls that competes with mobile and user controls for space. Which leaves us with a rather bare page counter example to build upon for advanced real world development. I outgrew the page counter example with my first try at developing a useful custom control. I rate it 2 stars because I'm primarily a web developer. WinForm developers may get enough out of it to raise it to 3 stars.
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Summary: John does it again!
Review: I have to admit, I'm a bit biased in regard to Mr. Connell. His bought on Coding techniques is one of my favorites of all, and I have a lot of .NET books. He has the incredible ability to make reading his stuff fun and get you thinking. He never goes off on tangents and really knows how to communicate his material. Creating controls is certainly something most developers will have to do...many times you have to do it a bunch. He has created many controls that I have myself (although he has some more interesting implementations), but the "Why" behind it really gets you thinking. he also has a lot of controls I never thought of, but have put into practice already. I had the book for about an hour before I put it down b/c I saw a ton of places to use his ideas in an app I was working on. Then he makes the case for component based programming in general. Sure, we all know we should re-use stuff. But many of us get in a hurry and forget to build things specifically with re-use in mind. I wont' make that mistake again. I can't say enough about this book, but you'll definitely like it. After i got a copy of it, the rest of my department eventually got a copy b/c everyone wanted to borrow it because of it's killer content. Everyone else shared my sentiments. I only wish John would quit his day job and write more books, few people do it as well as he does.
Rating:
Summary: Book plagued with mistakes
Review: I recently purchased this book to learn more about the advanced topics of authoring controls and I am abhorred. I feel instead like I'm an editor correcting a novice author's mistakes. Generally I seek out books published by Microsoft Press because they represent an excellent knowledge base for Microsoft products, but if I find another book like this one, it may be the last. John Connell is terribly inconsistent with his naming conventions, often referring to classes when he means objects and objects when he means classes, abstract when he means static, and so on. The code examples are poorly written and inconsistent with his own instruction. In one sentence he advises calling Dispose() to clean up resources and a paragraph later uses two disposable objects without following his own advice. Much of the code doesn't even compile as shown. For example he shows strings broken onto separate lines that end with an ampersand and line continuation character but don't start with a quotation mark on the next line. He makes ridiculous comments on how it's unadvisable to embed an apostrophe in a string because the editor will interpret it as a comment. (Yes, he really said that. "Now set up a string with the drive the user selected, which you retrieve from the dDrive class, and concatenate two single quotes. This way, you don't get lost in a sea of mismatched double and single quotes. And as you know, the editor sees a single quote as a remark." You'll also notice he once again referred to a variable holding an object, or *instance* of a class, as a class.) And it goes on and on and on from there. Microsoft Press guys, please don't ever let John Connell write another book for you again.
Rating:
Summary: Book plagued with mistakes
Review: I recently purchased this book to learn more about the advanced topics of authoring controls and I am abhorred. I feel instead like I'm an editor correcting a novice author's mistakes. Generally I seek out books published by Microsoft Press because they represent an excellent knowledge base for Microsoft products, but if I find another book like this one, it may be the last. John Connell is terribly inconsistent with his naming conventions, often referring to classes when he means objects and objects when he means classes, abstract when he means static, and so on. The code examples are poorly written and inconsistent with his own instruction. In one sentence he advises calling Dispose() to clean up resources and a paragraph later uses two disposable objects without following his own advice. Much of the code doesn't even compile as shown. For example he shows strings broken onto separate lines that end with an ampersand and line continuation character but don't start with a quotation mark on the next line. He makes ridiculous comments on how it's unadvisable to embed an apostrophe in a string because the editor will interpret it as a comment. (Yes, he really said that. "Now set up a string with the drive the user selected, which you retrieve from the dDrive class, and concatenate two single quotes. This way, you don't get lost in a sea of mismatched double and single quotes. And as you know, the editor sees a single quote as a remark." You'll also notice he once again referred to a variable holding an object, or *instance* of a class, as a class.) And it goes on and on and on from there. Microsoft Press guys, please don't ever let John Connell write another book for you again.
Rating: 
Summary: What does it contain?
Review: I'm with the first reviewer. For a long time now, i'm trying to find this book's table of contents. It's not in MSPress site or anywhere else. I'm really sick and tired of shallow or no books on .NET Controls and the amazon reviews are also misleading these days. May be there is not much going on at Redmond after the initial fluff , i guess ;)
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